Apple is adding in-app purchases and subscriptions to Family Sharing

While there will be a ton of talk about Apple's new software announcements and the switch away from Intel for its Mac chips, today's big WWDC opening keynote arguably buried the lede. It was buried deep inside the macOS Big Sur Newsroom post, but it's there. Apple is letting developers add in-app purchases and subscriptions to Family Sharing!

Hashtag finally.

Developers can now also offer Family Sharing for their in-app purchases and subscriptions, and with support for the WebExtensions API, developers can easily bring extensions built for other browsers over to Safari.

Once this change comes into effect, people will be able to buy an in-app purchase and subscription once and share it with all devices and users that are registered via Family Sharing.

This is huge for those of us who have found themselves buying the same subscription multiple times because Family Sharing wasn't supported. Developers will still need to opt into this change, but any developer who doesn't will surely need a very good reason. In the vast majority of situations, Family Sharing just makes sense.

The change wasn't mentioned in the iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 announcements but it will surely apply to all of Apple's operating systems and devices regardless.